hi loregoyle. thank you for your and the teams hard work. i think the dialog was good outside of some dialog choices shared between the different races. i enjoyed the characterizations of the npc's. it some how felt like more than just words and pictures on a screen. one encounter that intrigued me was mi'losh and the gall. his look, accent, and small backstory really made me want to hear more about him and his people.

since you asked what did or didn't work for us lore wise i would like to know more about clerics and faith based power. my d+d experience has me always thinking of clerics as having faith based magic. is this the same in hex or is it all in the hexing gems. do clerics draw power from gods/primals? do they have a natural connection to blood and wild power? could you please clarify this? the cleric class has always been one of my least favorite but hex has put such a different spin on it with some of the races that i find myself drawn to them.

i feel that the shin'hare and vennen get deserved attention for being original creations but i would like to give you props for the dwarfs and elves. i have been reading fantasy lit for 30+ years and when i read about dwarfs and elves in a story i usually roll my eyes but you have taken these tired archetypes and made them interesting to me. the dwarfs are almost wholly different and that is awesome. the elves are mainly cosmetically different but i still find them the most interesting portrayal of this archetype i have read in some time.i really liked the dialog in the elf starting area. it highlighted to me what elves in hex are all about, living epicly.

the last thing from me is a suggestion. i think there should be race specific art for the blessings that go in your deck from the cleric's pray ability. the sunny art for blessing does not seem to fit a vennen, necrotic, shin'hare, orc or dwarf deck.

Somehow, they managed to have a name (something your deserved as a high-born or for great prowess) and impress senior military for their skill despite their apparent lack of any background.

It's... well, quite disappointing. I was expecting to have a fully fleshed out insight of the transition from a litter to a full-fledged soldier in the Shin'Hare society and all I got was a "here, we magically introduce you, the player" instead.

As for the name part, per the Uzume article, all Shin'hare receive a name if they survive to six months of age.

I still need to do the Shin'hare opening though, but if the player was born as either a peasant or a common shock troop, I wouldn't be all that surprised if a high ranking official could just go, "You! You're coming with me on a mission of importance. Suit up. We leave in 10." Peasants or low rankers don't really have the right to say no.

Hi Loregoyle, to be honest, I'd like even more volume of lore! If there is any way to make more of the lore stuff completely optional, so that new players don't feel flooded / overwhelmed, but those who are interested can read away, I would be all for that.

Overall, I thought the writing was very good, but the world building was what really shined. Entrath is both cohesive and believable, which is a pretty huge accomplishment when you compare it to 99% of video games, even those sometimes praised for their world / story. The atmosphere, the interactions between the races, the primals, etc., they all just feel natural. It's good stuff.

I have two pieces of negative feedback to give, both of which are very minor. Firstly, some of the dialogue just seems too casual / slangy. If the characters in Hex are going to use slang, it should be some unique slang of their own, not ontemporary American slang. Second, I didn't feel like some of the Elf dialogue was believable. I was trying to picture the elf saying something like "prithee", and it ended up just being too silly. It's not all of the elf dialogue by any means...just some of it is over the top, and it breaks immersion.

My thoughts: Overall, good! Dialogue is enjoyable (at least the first time through), if a bit casual in some places. Didn't make me laugh, but it made me smile. The dungeons have nice themes to them, and it's overall very engrossing.

That being said. The dialogue being almost the same for every race takes away from things somewhat. It means every character, regardless of race, eventually defaults to the "same" character and/or variations thereof, which makes things kind of boring. It also doesn't always fit with the attitudes displayed at their "base" world, particularly for the elves as their speech is pretty recognizable, so it's jarring when they start talking like everyone else. On that subject, the elf dialogue does sometimes come off as just silly and eye-rolley, Shakespearian influence or not. Not sure what's to be done about that.

I still question why everyone hates the necrotic so much. I felt BAD doing King Lodegan's tomb, the king comes off as an ass and you're just kowtowing to him... some reason. Makes more sense if you're human, and maybe some if you're coyotle with reverence for spirits, but if you're an elf or orc? Less so. And some of the necrotic seem pretty darn reasonable. I felt bad about it before, but ESPECIALLY cutting down the Midnight Shepard guy, who literally tried to explain to you the circumstances behind why necrotic even ended up fighting the ardent to begin with, and who doesn't even attack you- you just get irrationally angry and decide "you gotta die". I can kind of get the humans caring about the corpse puppeteering thing, but why do the OTHER races care so strongly? This is one of the problems here with the identical dialogue, it makes the ardent especially come off as HUGE jerks.

(My feelings on the necrotic and their right to live can go in some other post, so I'll stop here.)

Honestly, humans are just jerks in this game. They're so full of themselves it's disgusting. Even as you save some knights from an angry mob of zombies, all they give as a thank is "I can't believed we were saved by a shin'hare". Their holier-than-thou attitude is running on my nerves.

Funnily enough, while Cryptozoic keeps selling us the Ardent as the "good guys" and the Underworld as the "bad guys" (just check at the release trailer of Chronicles of Entrath), we still have no solid proof that Necrotic have spiteful intentions, while humans use every occasion they have to show to the world that they're just a bunch of racists.

Honestly, humans are just jerks in this game. They're so full of themselves it's disgusting. Even as you save some knights from an angry mob of zombies, all they give as a thank is "I can't believed we were saved by a shin'hare". Their holier-than-thou attitude is running on my nerves.

Funnily enough, while Cryptozoic keeps selling us the Ardent as the "good guys" and the Underworld as the "bad guys" (just check at the release trailer of Chronicles of Entrath), we still have no solid proof that Necrotic have spiteful intentions, while humans use every occasion they have to show to the world that they're just a bunch of racists.

We know for a fact they didn't attack first, and just wanted to live and do their thing without being attacked for walking around in dead bodies. Or at least, so we've heard said by every necrotic so far. Maybe it's not true, but it's VERY believable given the way the humans act. They don't ever actually state the necrotic have evil INTENTIONS, just "they're evil", because of the corpse puppeteering, which is just so offensive to each and every human for some reason that it makes the necrotic evil by default. We have yet to hear a human complain about a necrotic for a reason besides "You're wearing a human corpse! That's just EVIL!" and "you're a necrotic". Of all the underworld races, they seem the most hated lorewise, yet the least reasonable to hate.

The necrotic I took to be slightly psychopathic; I mean they're alien minds from outer-space so that makes some sense, but their lack of empathy / etc makes doing evil but logical things very easy for them (like allying with + organizing with deadly efficiency a group of demented religious fanatics, hardcore racists, and others bent on literally destroying the world) - they certainly can't be the "good guys" even if their motivations aren't "evil"

Orcs of course are evil on purpose - they keep slaves and revel in murder, anyone who would ally with them can hold no claim over being the "good guys" imo (of course, when you are fighting a war you aren't trying to be the good guy...)